Bradford Taylor

Wow! My favorite genre of science is Eugene Koonin 1-pagers

Any clue about what would cause all journals to have unexpectedly large increases in 2019?

Got a link?

\title[PhD Plan for CANDIDATE]{Department of \mbox{Full Luxury Galactic Metascience}\\PhD Plan for CANDIDATE} % list committee members \author[]{Committee:\\ Prof.~MEMBER1\\ Dr.~MEMBER2\\ Dr.~MEMBER3} \date{\today} \begin{document} \maketitle% this prints the handout title, author, and date \begin{marginfigure}[-5.2cm] \includegraphics[width=3.5cm]{Minerva.pdf} \end{marginfigure} \section{Phenomenon} The subject matter to be addressed. What is the question? Citation for background are useful, but don't do a full lit review (yet).\cite{HenrichMcElreath:2003} Additional references can be included at the end bibliography by using \verb|\nocite|. \nocite{NBGA2005} \section{Theoretical Perspective} The framework for explaining the phenomenon. What are the implications of theory? If more than one theory is relevant, how do the implications differ? What are the current holes in the theory or theories? \section{Approach} Modeling and empirical research approach to address the theory/ies nominated above. Important thing is to \emph{justify} the approach in terms of theory. \section{Specifics of Approach} Outline any special skills, equipment, or techniques that will be required. This includes, in the case of field research, a paragraph on the background of the field location. Data analysis approach needs a sketch. Can use citation\cite{Merowetal2014} for further detail. \section{Expected Products} A list of the (usually 3) articles expected for completion of the PhD. Think of each as a fantasy abstract. \begin{enumerate} \item \emph{The Evolution of Human Uniqueness.} There is wide agreement that humans are unique. But it is rarely asked: Have they always been unique? In this paper, we derive a general uniqueness theorem that states that any unique species must have been less unique at some point in the past. This theorem has implications for the achievement of world peace.

\item \emph{Niche Construction, Disease Transmission, and Global Warming: Chaos Deconstructs the Block Chain.} How many buzz words can be combined in a title? In this paper, we find that the natural limit on buzz words in any specific scholarly field is always given by the triangular number $T_n$ where $n$ is one more than the number of tenured faculty in the field. \item \emph{A Bayesian Hierarchical Survival Analysis of Counting Sheep.} Just like all those other models of counting sheep, but this one will be Bayesian. \end{enumerate} \section{Schedule} Outline of the calendar for the work. This is necessarily rough and subject to change. \vspace{1em} \begin{fullwidth} {\centering \begin{longtable}{lll} \toprule \makecell{Date\\(Duration)} & Phase & Comment\\ \midrule \makecell{Jan 2019\\(1 year)} & \makecell{Phase 1} & First wave of being awesome \\ \midrule \makecell{Jan 2020\\(1 year)} & \makecell{Phase 2} & \makecell{Write papers \#1 and \#2} \\ \midrule \makecell{Jan 2021\\(6 months)} & \makecell{Phase 3} & Second wave of awesomeness \\ \midrule \makecell{Jun 2021\\(6 months)} & \makecell{Phase 4} & Write paper \#3 \\ \bottomrule \end{longtable} } \end{fullwidth} \bibliography{bibliography} \bibliographystyle{abbrv}

This November, like every November, I am teaching basic research proposal writing to the new phd cohort at my institute. Here is the 2 page template we start with and adapt. Link to LaTeX github.com/rmcelreath/P...

Regardless, it's a really slick method that could be used effectively. Just might require some deep thinking to avoid biases.

This bias could be small, particularly for lower R0 epidemics in larger populations. And there should be ways to ameliorate it at a cost of tracking more events. Unfortunately, any solution will allow reseeding the epidemic thus enabling the CI to cross 0.

Am I missing something? From my reading, counterfactual susceptibles generated by removing transmisison will behave dynamically like a recovered individual. They can not be re-infected in the original trajectory--effectively depleting susceptibles in the counterfactual and biasing estimates.

Current and former members of the NIH community have valuable personal perspectives to share about the devastation that is happening to US biomedical research, our federal agencies, and our democracy. This starter pack is a great way to hear what they have to say and what you can do about it.

🧪🧬🧠🥼🇺🇸

Post-pandemic social contact patterns in the United Kingdom: the Connect survey Close-contact and respiratory infectious diseases are spread through social interactions, which were affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and wider demographic and cultural changes. To estimate post-pand...

Got a number in mind?

A new pre-print by @lshtm.bsky.social colleagues surveyed 13,000 participants, and found it's about 9 per day in the current era.

It also looks at how social mixing varies with age, ethnicity and social economic status. Link to paper:

something, something, niche construction, something, something

Agreed, "longevity" was the wrong word for me to use, because AI is here to stay in some iteration.

I think AI will be truly transformational regardless of what's under the hood. Specifically the magnitude of societal adoption will be transformational, even if the model isn't.

I think AI's longevity hinges on our perception of how transformative it is, not its actual utility.

Clearly, AI does some things very well and some things very poorly. People differ in whether they see the successes as the edge cases or the failures as edge cases.

Comparing Strategies to Introduce Two New Antibiotics for Gonorrhea: A Modeling Study Introduction Drug resistance in Neisseria gonorrhoeae is an urgent public health threat. The anticipated approval of two new antimicrobials for gonorrhea prompts the need for evidence-based rollout st...

⚠️ New preprint ⚠️: Two new antibiotics are likely coming for gonorrhea 💊. How should we deploy them in the US to minimize drug resistance? @kroster.bsky.social @dhelekal.bsky.social Eva Rumpler @yhgrad.bsky.social [1/10]
www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

THIS. Immigrants are the backbone of US Science. 60% of Postdoc researchers at NIH are Visiting Fellows. Zooming out, 19% of all STEM workers and 43% of doctorate-level scientists and engineers in the US are foreign born.

American science runs on immigrant labor.

🌍Global brains, 🇺🇸American gains🧪

Sang Woo (Daniel) Park and I are excited to share a new preprint, "Susceptible host dynamics explain pathogen resilience to perturbations" [1/8]

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Generic Indicators for Loss of Resilience Before a Tipping Point Leading to Population Collapse Experiments in yeast confirm that statistical indicators can signal the approach of population crashes.

I was always impressed by how cleanly the empirical results matched dynamical systems theory in this work from Jeff Gore's lab about critical slowing down before population collapse: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Geospatial and demographic patterns of SARS-CoV-2 spread in Massachusetts from over 130,000 genomes Despite intensive study, gaps remain in our understanding of SARS-CoV-2 transmission patterns during the COVID-19 pandemic, in part due to limited contextual metadata accompanying most large genomic s...

I’m thrilled to share our latest preprint! We analyzed >130,000 SARS-CoV-2 genomes from MA to investigate complex transmission dynamics—from statewide patterns, within specific facilities, and at the individual level 🦠🧬

Check out the preprint here ⬇️
www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

US map via scienceimpacts.org visualization of economic loss due to IDC cuts to 15% as part of Feb 7, 2025 executive order, with shading denoting intensity of cuts.

Working with an interdisciplinary team, we have developed a website to communicate how the White House's proposed cuts to health research would cause losses of $16B and 68,500 jobs.

Find out how your community may be impacted.

Explore more at SCIMaP: scienceimpacts.org

a 🧵

So glad to share this work by @bradfordptaylor.bsky.social from his time working with us. It's a simple but elegant tweak to some of the established ID epi models. Among other things it helps explain why the great majority of 'variants' did not become dominant
elifesciences.org/reviewed-pre...

How Science Can Adapt to a New Normal Opinion | In the wake of attacks on the research enterprise, scientists need to focus on protecting its fragile infrastructure.

"No one is coming out of the sky to give you your grant money. Your citation portfolio won’t survive this market crash. Your credentials mean nothing. Everything is going to change."

New for @undark.org

undark.org/2025/03/06/o...

@npr.org is contributing to misinformation by not contextualizing Musk’s statements with 1) all feds responded to prior required DOGE emails (existence proof) and 2) that some agencies notified their employees of security dangers in responding to the non-mandatory 5 bullet email

Solid. I now realize I might've just misinterpreted the plot because the blue line does not span the entire domain. Since it met the red perfectly visually I thought it was plotted over at later time points (which in retrospect wouldn't make any sense).

You're creating, and I'm just destroying :-\. Appreciate it all, especially your book

Looks like it's after 365 days too

Seems odd blue and red lines merge. Any sense what's up?

Enterobacteriaceae isolated from patients share antibiotic resistance conferring plasmids recently acquired from those isolated from sinks in the same treatment room Identifying how and where pathogens acquire antibiotic resistance is crucial to developing effective strategies to limit its spread. Many bacterial species carry and share plasmids harboring antibioti...

Not the most visually appealing, but I’ve found dot plots (eg, via mummer/nucmer) adequate

Check out our preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Caveat, the results in the paper are underpowered because a lack of funding to sequence more. The figures are fine though

26 households too, so that variance is probably up there, but not shown

This is certainly interesting… and in Utah. Shifting demographics between groups likely explains the curious nonlinearity.

Would love an add

I agree feeds would create different attachment dynamics. I also wonder about whether some differences are transient -- currently being driven by founder effects given bsky's nascence